Councilor Cristian Pomares demands explanations about an infrastructure that has consumed millions of euros and remains closed and deteriorating.
The councilor for the Initiative for La Gomera (IxLG) in the Valle Gran Rey City Council, Cristian Pomares Sánchez, has denounced the “authentic nonsense of public money buried” in the so-called Artisanal Training Center and Sales Center of Valle Gran Rey, an infrastructure whose processing began more than three decades ago and which, despite subsequent investments made by different administrations, continues to be closed, unused and suffering progressive deterioration.
Pomares recalls that in January 1996 the Valle Gran Rey City Council provisionally approved the project called “Artisan Training Workshop and Sales Center in Valle Gran Rey”, with an initial budget of 146 million pesetas, equivalent to more than 878,000 euros. Since then, the work was subsequently subject to successive modifications, budget extensions, new tenders, complementary projects and completion actions that ended up increasing the initially planned cost.
Among the different execution phases, a tender in 2007 stands out, which led to the subsequent award of more than 1.22 million, a complementary project valued at 416,302 euros, and new updating and completion actions commissioned between 2014 and 2015, which totaled nearly 240,000 additional euros. Added to this are the items previously consigned by the Government of the Canary Islands for its development and completion.
The mayor of the Initiative for La Gomera (IxLG) points out that this infrastructure is a paradigmatic case of the “poor works” that populate the geography of the island. Furthermore, this case is especially serious because, despite repeated institutional statements announcing its imminent start-up, the reality is that the facility has never managed to provide the service for which it was designed. “For years it was promised that the center would open its doors immediately, that it would be at the service of artisans and island training, but today it remains closed and abandoned,” said the councilor.
Likewise, remember that in 2012 the receiving commission agreed not to receive the works as they did not conform to the executed projects and that, subsequently, public funds continued to be allocated to try to complete the infrastructure. Even in 2015, officials from the Government of the Canary Islands publicly announced that the center was about to be received and made available to the citizens.
“The only thing that can be verified today is that the building remains unusable, with significant damage due to acts of vandalism, including the breaking of windows, while the neighbors watch how a million-dollar investment deteriorates without having generated any social, economic or cultural benefit for Valle Gran Rey,” lamented Pomares.
From the Initiative for La Gomera (IxLG) they consider that this file represents one of the most obvious examples of poor planning, lack of control and absence of accountability in the management of public investments. For this reason, the training requires the administrations involved to provide a detailed report that allows them to know the real total cost of the infrastructure, the causes that have prevented its start-up and the measures planned to prevent the building from continuing to deteriorate.
“Citizens have the right to know exactly how much money has actually been spent, who was responsible for the decisions made and what solution is proposed for a facility that, after decades of announcements and promises, continues to be a symbol of waste and lost opportunities for Valle Gran Rey,” concluded the councilor of the Initiative for La Gomera (IxLG).
